"A garden that pleases me is a garden…designed with deliberation" – David Hicks

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Whimsy

This is the first garden tour I attended this season, there are several more on the agenda. I promise to post about them all.

Nothing says Welcome quite like a gate. I saw several that intrigued me on the Gardens for Connoisseurs Tour to benefit The Atlanta Botanical Garden.

My friend Becky rushing in to get detail photos of this delightful gate. We were tripping over each other in excitement. look at these ….

Clever designs and beautiful workmanship. We loved all the details. Gates like these were in several of the gardens, a wonderful piece, both practical and whimsical.

Several of Atlanta’s finest private gardens open for this annual event. These are all designer gardens with regular and knowledgeable crews to tend them. They are perfectly groomed. One will never find a yellowing leaf, no space left where a plant was lost, some annual potted plant is placed in its stead, very tastefully.

Touches of whimsy…….

The summer containers were packed with perennial foliage plants and annuals.

I was particularly taken with a table centerpiece …..

and of course the peaceful sound of water.

Beautiful gardens…..

All in all a no miss event. With our weather this year, the gardens will be more beautiful that ever.

My friend Ginny has a wonderfully charming Garden House.

She is getting everything organized, pegboard for hanging garden tools,

shelving to hold baskets of vases organized by size; there is an area for Christmas & Easter decoration storage and a counter for potting & flower arranging, upon which Ginny is creating a ceramic mosaic of the 4 seasons.

What I love most about it however, are the scenes she had her friends paint on the walls.

Ginny paints too, her wall below…

Can’t wait to make my small contribution .

A note to my readers: the blog GARDEN PHOTO OF THE DAY written by Martha Tate will reappear shortly. Her domain name was accidentally dropped and taken by another blogger. I will post her new link as soon as it is available.

“At each end of this lovely little wall were two brick pillars. They stood there, perfectly poised, exactly the right height, exactly the right width. But in spite of their architectural rightness they were wrong, or rather, they were incomplete. They had obviously been built to hold something – carved pineapples, or stone balls, or…or…or Urns.

It was when the word Urns came into my head that the garden was born” – Beverly Nichols

Lacking a lovely wall or even just the brick pillars…. I have finials, two sets. One, a basket of flowers….

The other of fruit.

FINIALS – IN – WAITING!

“Surely – in all matters appertaining to elegance – the most important thing to do first is the last thing?” – Beverly Nichols

We think alike.

In context, with plants of like colour.

This garden space, which separates the “Pleasure Garden” or Viburnum Court from the Potager, has long given me grief. Originally it was conceived as a Rosemary Walk; a brick lined, grass path, planted on both sides with rosemary. Meant to make contact as one passes and release its glorious fragrance.

Alas, that failed miserably.. The soil here is heavy with clay, and although it has been well amended, it is still not light enough for a mediterranean herb. BUT it is perfect for Roses with Clematis as companions. I also allow some Cleome to seed itself….. Still under construction. …. A garden in Homage to Elsa Schiaparelli “that Italian artist who makes clothes!”- Coco Chanel